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Le Mont-de-Piété (The Pawn Shop) or Chez Ma Tante
(Jean Beraud)

Description

This painting shows a gentleman having just collected some cash from the Credit Municipal, behind him we see a young woman waiting her turn. It is typical of the everyday scenes that Béraud made his specialty. Pawn shops, which had been a traditional means of raising short-term cash, had been banned in 1797 under the Directory (the government that succeeded the first republic). The need for such institutions, however, was not removed, and so the government eventually established state owned and managed institutions to fulfill the same need, the Crédit Municipal. Nonetheless, the old pre-revolutionary name, ma tante (my aunt) still stuck, and everyone understood when someone went to borrow some money from their aunt.

Measurements
18 1/8 x 14 5/8 ins. 46 x 37 cm
Type
Oil on panel
Literature

Literature: Jean Béraud, La Belle Époque, Une Époque Rêvée, by Patrick Offenstadt, Köln, 1999.

Where is It?
Stair Sainty Matthiesen
Historical Period
Realism to Impressionism - 1840-1900
Subject
Genre or Daily Life
School
French
Price band
$100,000 - $150,000